Massage Parlors Feel New Pressure

Suburbs Try To Rub Out Sites Operating As Prostitution Fronts

January 31, 1997|By Desiree Chen, Tribune Staff Writer.

Imagine a customer who has walked into a Des Plaines massage parlor, drawn by ads that promise "New Girls" or "Beautiful Staff." After stripping down to his altogether in a small room, he turns to see a large sign on the wall, the lettering not less than 2 inches high:

"Pursuant to the City Code of Des Plaines: The genital areas of all customers shall be covered at all times when in the presence of an employee. No employee shall touch or fondle in any manner or massage the sexual or genital area of any person. Any person or customer violating the City Code shall be subject to prosecution for the violation of the City Code."

That cold water hitting him isn't from a shower but from a recent change to the northwest suburb's massage parlor ordinance, intended to douse any attempts to turn massages into sexual encounters.

Des Plaines and other suburbs increasingly are taking meticulous and creative approaches to lawmaking as they try to thwart massage parlors that are prostitution fronts, yet not discourage legitimate physical therapy.

Rather than attack such businesses only with prostitution arrests, many municipalities, including Buffalo Grove, Des Plaines, Downers Grove, Hoffman Estates, Naperville and Schaumburg, also have separate ordinances to regulate massage parlors. Several towns recently have been strengthening portions of those laws.

The problem with relying on prostitution laws, police and village officials say, is that prostitution arrests don't always result in convictions.

Even when they do, individual employees usually are fined, but the business might continue to operate.

"I think it's better to attack the establishment, not just the employees," said Deputy Police Chief Ronald McClaskey in Arlington Heights, where village lawyers have been working on a massage parlor ordinance in light of continuing problems with a particular parlor where police have made prostitution arrests.

Local massage "parlors" earned the raunchy aspect of their reputation in Chicago in the 1970s, where the catchall term included dozens of storefronts offering everything from naked masseuses to nude keymaking.

After Mayor Richard J. Daley cracked down on the operations, many moved to unincorporated areas before being zoned to the industrial fringes. By the early 1990s, massage businesses were starting to open in the suburbs, in some cases prompting complaints that led to police raids and prostitution arrests.

So various suburbs started crafting their own ordinances, some of them offering imaginative ways to keep out the criminal element.

In Des Plaines, Downers Grove, Naperville and Schaumburg, officials require massage parlors as well as individual masseuses and masseurs to obtain separate licenses. That usually involves being fingerprinted and undergoing a criminal background check.

Buffalo Grove and Schaumburg allow massage only as an "ancillary service," such as if it is affiliated with a medical practice or beauty salon. Schaumburg is considering loosening that restriction, but tightening others.

Schaumburg also requires that massage therapists, for health reasons, be "fully covered in clean clothing from a point not to exceed four inches above the center of the kneecap to the base of the neck by opaque material, excluding the arms and hands."

Naperville evidently means to intimidate anyone who would dare to demean the healing art by opening a sex den. Besides requiring training from a 500-hour, state-approved massage-therapy school, its ordinance mandates that "massage therapists must have knowledge of anatomy and physiology and an understanding of the relationship between the structure and the function of the tissues being treated and the total function of the body."

In Hoffman Estates, massages cannot be given to a client by a person of the opposite sex, unless the masseuse or masseur is a medical practitioner or physical therapist. Barbers and beauticians who rub their clients' heads, necks or shoulders also are exempt.

In Des Plaines, the $200-a-year business license for a massage parlor is one of the most expensive city licenses. A building contractor, by comparison, pays just $50 annually.

"A village can prohibit criminal acts and may use every means it has to safeguard its citizens from criminal acts being undertaken under the auspices of a business," said lawyer Kathleen Field Orr, who has represented suburbs including Park Forest and Calumet City.

Ever since Chicago's crackdown in the 1970s and early 1980s, and the strict enforcement of a massage parlor ordinance dating back to 1939, problems in the city are "nothing like they used to be," said Lt. Kathryn Kajari, commanding officer of the Chicago Police Department's prostitution unit.